Subject: Re: bug#25594: 25.1.91; TeX input method is missing \sqrt macro

From: Stefan Kangas <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2020 21:14:40 +0100

Lars Ingebrigtsen <[email-masked]> writes:

> Tyler Smith <[email-masked]> writes:
>
>> The TeX input method does not provide a translation for the \sqrt macro.
>> The appropriate symbol, unicode Square Root, is available, and can be
>> inserted using the obscure name \surd.
>>
>> Perhaps that's a well-known word to some, but for regular TeX users, it
>> would be very helpful to have the following rule added to the
>> (latin-ltx--define-rules ...) form in lisp/leim/quail/latin-ltx.el:
>>
>>  ("\\sqrt" ?√)
>
> (I'm going through older Emacs bug reports that have received no
> response.)
>
> That seems a reasonable thing to add, and it's in patch form below.  But
> what makes me hesitate to add it is that there's a commented-out
> "\\sqrt[3]" in the file...  Does this mean that this should be
> "\\sqrt[2]"?  Why is it commented out in the first place?  Don't
> latin-ltx people like squares?  And roots?
>
> So if anybody else who uses this input method could weigh in here, that
> would be nice.

No one has commented within 25 weeks.

AFAIK, TeX has the \sqrt command for a basic square root, and \sqrt[3]
for the cubic root.  That suggests that the proposal is fine (we can
leave the sqrt[3] commented out as is for now IMHO).

Best regards,
Stefan Kangas

>
> diff --git a/lisp/leim/quail/latin-ltx.el b/lisp/leim/quail/latin-ltx.el
> index 93b1250a35..aed34d1265 100644
> --- a/lisp/leim/quail/latin-ltx.el
> +++ b/lisp/leim/quail/latin-ltx.el
> @@ -703,6 +703,7 @@
>   ("\\ldq" ?\“)
>   ("\\rdq" ?\”)
>   ("\\defs" ?≙)				; per fuzz/zed
> + ("\\sqrt" ?√)
>   ;; ("\\sqrt[3]" ?∛)
>   ("\\llbracket" ?\〚) 			; stmaryrd
>   ("\\rrbracket" ?\〛)